"Composing Behaviors of One- and Multi-Draft Writers"

TITLE: “Composing Behaviors of One- and Multi-Draft Writers”

AUTHOR: Muriel Harris

SOURCE: College English, Vol. 51, No. 2. (Feb. 1989), pp. 174-191

RESEARCH QUESTION(S): 1) Is it necessary for all writers to learn to revise after a text is written?  2) Can revision occur at the pre-text stage?  3) Can we learn something valuable from writers at the extreme ranges of the spectrum (efficient, if narrow, one-draft planners and hopelessly heuristic multi-drafters)?  4) Can the writers operating at the extremes articulate or reveal tendencies, strategies, and/or practices that may be beneficial to those of us somewhere in the middle of this spectrum?  5) How should the answers to all these questions inform our teaching of composition?

ANSWER TO RESEARCH QUESTIONS:  What did we find out?

1.         Harris recognizes that one-drafters, with their more limited tolerance for ambiguity, may limit their options at the outset.  They do, however, engage in a kind of pre-text process that can be viewed as revision.  Harris does her best to distinguish between one-draft writers and those who procrastinate and/or state that they just don’t like to write much, let alone revisit their work.  This is a difficult task for Harris, as one-draft writers may appear disinterested and lacking in motivation to write, but she does her best to forge a clear picture of this breed of writers, noting their careful pre-text planning as an area in which they are both interested and motivated to perfect. 

2.         Yes! Harris concludes that while one-draft writers may not relish the actual putting pen to paper (or cursor to screen), many do enjoy the pre-text stage.  These writers may not have identified themselves as lovers of writing, but pre-text writing is indeed a stage of writing that they can appreciate.  These writers frequently enjoy researching, planning, focusing, and outlining, and this pre-writing effort results in efficient management of time and the ability to write under pressure. 

3.         In viewing the writers at the extreme ends of the spectrum, our assumptions regarding necessary stages of writing begin to give way to a more nuanced set of possible approaches.  One-draft writers wish to plan carefully and efficiently, so that they can quickly generate writing that Linda Flower calls “reader-based prose,” while multi-draft writers write to know what they think and feel and believe about a subject.  They instinctively write for themselves, before considering their audience and purpose.  Both types of writers do have a “search process,” but the process is longer, as we might expect, for the multi-drafter.  As teachers of composition, we want to know how to work with every type of writer on the spectrum.  There are also key strategies employed by each camp that can benefit the other – as well as the majority of writers who are situated somewhere in the middle.

4.         Yes.  Ted, one of the one-draft writers Harris studies, explains that before writing he constructs a conceptual framework, defines a few categories which will constitute his main point(s), envisions the reader, chooses a form, fine tunes his main point(s), and considers how his work will be employed by his audience.  Amy, another one-drafter, focuses throughout on clarity.  These strategies take place before writing.  Harris feels that these pretext strategies may help the multi-drafter to work more quickly and more efficiently.  Conversely, the multi-drafters’ writing to see what we think or feel about a subject opens up possibilities that might not otherwise have been considered; free writing, then, might deepen the work of the one-drafter, if we could get them to do it.  The implications for those situated more in the middle of the spectrum are less clear; certainly it is helpful for all of us to become aware of our own unique and previously-unexamined processes and to fine tune them as necessary. 

5)  Harris makes clear that there is not one perfect way to write.  This may not seem to be a revolutionary idea, but for those of us who teach K-12 grades, we know that we have been encouraged to teach writing in quite a formulaic five-stage manner (as described by pedagogical gurus Gardner and Johnson).  While we can and perhaps should encourage students to try to experiment across the aisle, borrowing the strategies of the opposing side, we may find students have discovered ways of working that do the job just fine.  Brainstorming, planning sheets, and outlining may work just as well as writing to find out what we want to write (heuristic writing).  Harris believes that teachers may impose their own writing strategies on their students; clearly, we need to examine this and acknowledge that there are many ways to write – and to write well. 

RESEARCH DESIGN:  Harris created and executed a case study of eight graduate students (four one-drafters and four multi-drafters).  She asked them to give talk-aloud protocols as they wrote to a prompt and videotaped them at work. 

KEY RELATED STUDIES:  Harris draws upon the work of other composition experts:  Nancy Sommers’ work on revision; Lillian Bridwell’s 1980 survey of revision and findings that there are wide range of ways to revise; Stephen Witte’s discussion of the limitations of “retranscription”; and Linda Flower and John Hayes’s assertions about pretext work and reader- and writer-based prose.  Maxine Hairston, too, is cited here:  her understanding of types of writing is taken into consideration.  Additionally, Harris considers Tom Waldrep’s collection of essays Writers on Writing useful, as it offers a wide range of strategies offered by professional writers. 

UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS:  Harris examines our societal assumptions regarding revising, namely that it must take place after writing.  Many teachers privilege this kind of writing process.  Harris herself has assumptions.  She assumes that writers can articulate their writing practices and that the process of her study will not affect the validity of its findings.  What I mean by this is that the subjects of the study will not be changed by the talk-aloud protocol or the knowledge that they are being videotaped.  Additionally, Harris assumes that the strategies of fairly successful graduate students who teach composition or communication courses can and will replicate those of less educated or skilled writers.  Most importantly, Harris assumes that the writing strategies of self-proclaimed one- and multi-drafters can add to our knowledge of those operating somewhere in the middle. 

SUBJECTS:  Harris selected eight graduate students who taught composition or communications courses and were experienced and competent writers.  All had high scores on standardized tests for verbal skills.  Four of the subjects were self-described one-draft writers and four labeled themselves multi-drafters. 

METHOD OF RESEARCH: Harris interviewed each student for about an hour, finding out what types of writing they did and how they revised, and, in this way, pinpointed their attitudes about the writing process.  Next, she gave them an hour to write in response to a prompt.  Each subject was asked to talk aloud as he or she worked.  The subjects were videotaped as they wrote.  After this, Harris interviewed them again to find out how closely the writing processes observed in the study replicated the subjects’ usual ways of writing. 

MEASUREMENT OR ANALYTIC METHODS: Harris observed and analyzed the subjects at work.  She did not chart or graph her findings, but instead wrote about what she observed anecdotally.  This essay contains her clear and detailed observations, as well as the subjects’ own description of their typical writing habits and strategies. 

RESULTS: The one-draft writers do not write until they have worked out the details of what they are writing about, what they want to say, and how they are going to organize their ideas.  While some of them make notes, others sat for a while and thought things out.  They all expressed a need to plan ahead of time and know the “direction the piece of writing would take” (180).  Conversely, the multi-drafters “resist knowing” (181) and like to start writing right away, as a means of exploring the topic and what they feel about it.  Later, they view their writing and begin to fine tune their focus and organization. 

CONCLUSIONS:  The study reveals that both kind of writers, one- and multi-drafters, do plan, write, and revise, but in entirely different ways.  The one-draft writer plans before writing; the multi-draft writer plans through writing.  The one-draft writer revises, for the most part, before he or she writes, while the multi-drafter must see what he or she thinks about the subject, before narrowing the topic, focus, and sculpting his or her work.  

IMPLICATIONS: Early in the essay, Harris suggests that it might be interesting and useful to determine how many writers identify themselves as one-drafters and how many see themselves as multi-drafters.  Later, she admits that most writers would identify themselves as falling somewhere on this spectrum.  The kind of follow-up study that she proposes would be quite difficult to do.  Many young writers have not yet identified how they work best; they are still in the process of figuring this out. 

Harris’s essay, however, does make clear that as teachers we need to be mindful of the divergent writers that we find in our classrooms.  While some students have strategies that work, many have simply settled on the semblance of a writing process and really haven’t explored the possibilities to find what works best for them.  Offering a variety of options in a low stress atmosphere of mutual exploration and experimental may lower their affective filters and allow them to see writing in a more relaxed and enjoyable manner.  Students who are determined to continue as one-draft writers may need a bit of coaxing to try free writing and other writing-for-the-writer strategies.  Conversely, the multi-drafter may need encouragement to employ useful strategies from the one-drafter.  He or she can gain speed and efficiency by planning and thinking through before writing.  Of great consequence for us as teachers is that we respect all writers, regardless of where they fall on the spectrum, and recognize that there are a variety of strategies – beyond what works for us individually. 

STRENGTHS OF THE STUDY: Harris’s case study and talk-aloud protocols are intriguing and thoughtful.  She is careful to interview her subjects for one hour and then have them write for one hour.  Her follow-up interviews are also one hour in length.  She does her best to be consistent in terms of time and questions.  Her depictions of their writing habits are rich, thoughtful, and seemingly unbiased.  She analyzes what she observes carefully, avoiding any sense of her predisposition for one approach over another.  This is no easy feat, as most of us have, through our previous writing classes, come to see multi-drafting as absolutely essential to the success of our writing. 

CRITIQUE OR LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY:  The main limitation here is the number of subjects in this study.  Eight is a very small sampling of the population.  Also, the writing practices of graduate students, especially those teaching composition and communications courses, may not adequately reveal strategies that would work for younger and/or less experienced writers.  Writers who identify themselves as working at the extremes of the drafting spectrum may have unique writing concerns that are not reflective of others.  Lastly, the study’s relatively short, one-hour writing assignment seems to suggest the need for highly efficient one-draft writing, not the thoughtful heuristic writing for the writer, followed by careful revision.  There simply isn’t time for it. 

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE STUDY: First, how might the findings of a study like this be different in 2013?  In 1989, few people had home computers.  Writing by hand or typing invites different strategies, as corrections are far more difficult to make.  The writer of 1989, especially writing for a one-hour assignment, would have to think long and hard before choosing to revise for purely cosmetic reasons.  Personal computers and laptops allow the writer to play with word choice and finesse paragraph placement in a way that writers of previous generations could not.  Would one-draft writers of 1989 be converted to multi-drafters in 2013?  It would be interesting to revisit Harris’s original subjects and find out how their approaches have changed. 

Could Harris have enlarged her sample size?  Why didn’t she do so? 

How might a study of less experienced writers differ from this one?

Does the talk-aloud protocol and the awareness of the camera affect how the subjects proceed?  In other words, how valid are the findings?  While Harris’s study has face validity, the nature of this study may create a self-consciousness that affects the construct validity to some extent.